


A Winter's Tale

by twistedchick



Category: Sports Night
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-13
Updated: 2009-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 15:38:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Twin Cities, Dan and Casey encounter snow, sleep sheep and Jaegermeister, among other things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Winter's Tale

The early November wind blew Casey and Dan through the revolving door into the hotel lobby, though Casey was helped by the ice underfoot, sliding him into the building. Dan skidded after him, bumping into him in the wedge of space between doors and tripping on the rug when they were inside.

Casey shrugged his shoulders and watched the snow fall off his coat; when he stamped his feet the snow on his legs fell to the rug as if ordered. It was Midwestern snow; he knew what to expect. As long as it was off his clothes during the first two minutes he was indoors, his clothes would stay relatively dry.

Dan knocked the snow off his shoulders and coat sleeves, and took off his knitted wool hat to knock it against his leg. He was surprised how easily the dense flakes came off, instead of clinging to the material and melting as it would in an Eastern winter. Just when he thought he was relatively snow-free, Casey shook a clump of flakes out of his hair that smacked Dan in the face.

"Hey! You're as bad as a sheepdog, Casey."

"What? Oh, sorry. Couldn't see you there for the windstorm you're making."

"You're absolutely a sheepdog. You didn't even look before you shook that snow off at me, did you."

"I did not look. I'm sorry. But I won't admit I'm a sheepdog."

"No problem. It's your turn to buy, and they don't usually let sheepdogs into bars," Dan said as they headed for the warmer, cheerier room on the first floor. The other was a restaurant that specialized in "stuffed stuff with heavy," as Dan had told Casey earlier, saying he was quoting Calvin Trillin; busboys were clearing the tables and the last couple of customers were leaving.

"I can't speak for other places, but I don't think either Minneapolis or St. Paul allows sheepdogs in bars," Casey said, handing his coat to the coat-check girl. "Do they allow sheepdogs here?" he asked her.

"Only seeing-eye sheepdogs," she replied with an uncertain smile.

"See? This bar is a sheepdog-free environment, Dan. You can feel perfectly safe."

"Except for you." Dan smiled at the coat-check girl, who smiled back without the uncertainty as she handed him a claim chip. "What other places?"

"What other places what?"

"What other places might allow sheepdogs?"

"Oh." Casey thought a moment. "Montana. Wyoming. Places where they have sheep."

"I see. There aren't any sheep in the Twin Cities, then."

"I would suspect not."

"Good thing. You'd never be able to see them out there in that weather. Snowplows would roll down the street pushing them aside and never hearing their frantic baas."

"I think you need a drink, Dan."

"I think I need a drink, too." He scanned the labels on the taps. "Brrr. I'm feeling too cold for beer."

"Perhaps something to warm you up, sir. An Irish coffee?" the bartender suggested, handing Dan a drink menu. "If there's something you want that isn't on here, just describe it and we'll see what we can do."

Casey leaned on the padded bar, staring at the row of tall bottles that glowed in the light reflected off a mirror set into the hardwood paneling behind them. The piped-in music had the soft sounds of good jazz, which he'd always liked. Maybe, in another life, he'd have a chance to play some instrument well enough to make that kind of music. Drums would be fun, or maybe something in the winds like a sax or a cornet. "I'd like a Jaegermeister, straight up."

The bartender smiled. "Right away, sir."

"A Jaegermeister? Sounds like a demanding sportscar."

"It's a liqueur. I got to like it when I was in Germany."

"When was that?"

"Junior year abroad. Before we met."

"That explains why you've never mentioned a Jaegermeister before."

"It's not something I drink all the time."

"Obviously."

"Only when I'm really cold."

"Colder than you were in Montana?"

"Yes, Dan, there are actually places colder than Montana, and one of them, I hate to say, was the room I rented in Heidelberg that winter." Casey lifted the glass and swirled the liqueur, approving the sensuous slowness of its return to the bottom of the balloon glass. "I had a little extra money from my stipend, so I bought a bottle of this stuff. It kept me warm for a month."

"Really." Dan looked impressed. "Let me have some of that," he told the bartender, who poured for him and handed him the glass. "It smells pretty good."

"It tastes even better."

"It kept you warm for a month?"

"In small doses." Casey sipped his drink, letting it catch in the back of his throat on the way down, and felt it start to warm him. "Not the whole thing at once, of course."

"Of course." Dan swirled the glass under his nose, sniffed approvingly, and took a sip. Casey watched his eyebrows rise and grinned, knowing from the inside the reaction he was seeing.

"This is something else. This stuff is really something else." Dan licked his lower lip, feeling his tongue buzz and hum with the subtle flavors. "Ooh, yeah."

"Hey, we needed something to toast the victory tonight, right?" Casey raised his glass. Dan clinked his glass against it and nodded, and both of them took another sip.

"Um. What victory are we toasting?" Dan asked. A vertical line appeared between his eyebrows, which rose in thought. "The basketball game we saw at the Target Center? The other two games we were supposed to see that were canceled because of the weather? Or something else?"

"The game we saw." Casey nodded, an expression on his face that might actually have appeared to be wisdom if he'd looked a few years older. As it was, he looked like a lanky young owl, blinking thoughtfully with round brown eyes. "But it could be something else. What else happened today?"

"We got to walk through three blocks of snow-enhanced sidewalks, after the taxi from Minneapolis managed to get stuck in a drift? No, that's not that important." Dan considered the row of bottles against the mirrored wall, as one of his eyebrows rose slightly. "I had a date last week? No, that was last week, and it also wasn't that important. Let me see...we arrived here mid-day, and nothing important happened after that except for the taxi, so it would have to be before that. Aha." He sneaked a glance at Casey. "You got laid? No, scratch that. You're married; that happens all the time."

Casey looked away, a blush washing up from his shirt collar and over his face. "Not as much as you'd think, while Charlie's a toddler. He's running Lisa ragged."

Dan appeared to regret mentioning Casey's marriage. "I've heard that can be really tiring."

"Yeah, much as I love Charlie, he can wear us down to nothing in no time flat. I'd rather not talk about it."

"Okay. But I've got to tell you, I'm really grateful that you managed to get away for the weekend. I didn't want to have to come to St. Paul alone in the winter. How did you do it?" Dan leaned in toward Casey, focusing on him as if he alone held the secret to all wisdom. "Tell me, o swami, how you finessed this disappearing trick with our respective bosses."

"And stations. Don't forget our competing stations."

"How could I possibly forget? But we're keeping pace in the ratings."

Casey waved away the discussion he could see coming. "Do you want to hear how I finessed this?"

"I am all attention, o great teacher."

"Three little words."

"Not the usual three words, I'd expect."

Casey's head-shake seemed less defined than usual, but it could have been Dan's eyesight, what with the long shifts he'd been working at his understaffed station for the past month. "Office expense account. We didn't have to pay for it, and I'll have a paycheck coming in when we get back." He shuffled his feet and stared into his glass. "The money angle's really big now, since we have to plan for the future."

"Of course it is," Dan assured him. "It's supposed to be. You've got a kid to plan for." He nodded with assurance. "Just to show you I understand totally and support you in this endeavor to the best of my ability, I'll buy the next round."

"I appreciate it." Casey gestured toward their suddenly empty glasses and the bartender replaced them with two more balloon glasses. In the bottom of each one a small lake of Jaegermeister floated, its gently swirling surface like the glow on a funhouse mirror.

"You're welcome." Dan searched his pockets, finally finding his wallet and putting enough money on the bar to cover the drinks, with some left over. At this hour he wasn't concerned about how much he was overtipping, since he didn't have to venture back out into the frigid world of three-foot drifts and nonexistent taxis until morning, when the drifts would, he hoped, have been dealt with by the fleet of snowplows owned by the brave and honorable local public works departments. Dan figured they'd have to be brave to voluntarily go out in that weather, and he hoped they'd be honorable enough to actually clear the streets and not reconfigure the snowdrifts into Olympic ski jumps or replicas of the St. Moritz-Celerina bobsled run in the middle of the street.

Casey watched Dan with a feeling of real affection. It was so hard for him to find someone to talk with who didn't need explanations about the important things in life, like the three-second lane rule in hoops or the insanity of using designated hitters in baseball. Lisa didn't understand; she didn't talk much, or listen, and when she did it was about bank accounts, or finding the perfect in-vogue restaurant (which they couldn't always afford) in which to schmooze with people from Los Angeles whom she thought could improve his career. Those might be necessities, though he thought the schmoozing and the restaurants were overrated, but that made them routine, not important. They were too concrete to be important. If he paid too much attention to that kind of thing he'd have to be someone he wasn't, someone who thought money was what made life worth living instead of watching a pitcher throw a perfect hanging curve ball. He and Lisa were evolving a way of dealing with this; he hoped that Charlie would be a bridge for them to get past it, with enough interests all around so that everyone would be happy. Or happier.

Dan wasn't an open book to him, but he didn't cover up whatever pages were in view, however partial, and this counted for a lot. He was an Easterner, in the best way, intelligent and thoughtful and without the reticence that Casey seemed to have been cradled in from birth. Casey wasn't really sure how Dan did it, keeping his privacy while being forthright about himself. Perhaps it was something about Connecticut.

"Thanks," he said to Dan, who nodded and sipped his drink.

"You're welcome, but for what?"

Casey shrugged. "It was sort of a generalized 'thanks.' Nothing specific."

"Okay." Dan shivered as a drop of snowmelt from the back of his hair finally dripped into the space between his collar and his neck, and landed on his skin. "Do you think we could get another of these and take it up to the room?"

"No problem," the bartender said. "Hey, this one's on me. I don't get a lot of requests for Jaegermeister, and it's a quiet night anyway. Consider it an early Christmas gift."

"I appreciate the thought," Dan said, enunciating carefully as if 'appreciate' had recently acquired extra syllables since the last time he'd said the word. The bartender nodded, smiled professionally and turned away toward the small group at the other end of the bar.

"Let's go, partner," Casey said. "You all right?"

"Fine. I'm fine. Just a bit cold."

"We'll turn up the heat upstairs," Casey promised, finishing his second drink and collecting his third for the trip to the elevator.

The room was a corner ice cube in tasteful blue wallpaper with ecru trim, with the wind whistling around two sides of it and oversized windows half-covered in blown snow. And, instead of the two double-sized beds they'd been promised, there was one king-sized bed with its head against the north wall.

"Is this Novgorod?" Dan wondered aloud. He dropped his coat on a chair, cocking his head and listening like a hunting dog tracking footprints through the wilderness. "Or Kiev?"

"What?" Casey tried to hang his coat on a hanger in the closet, but all the hangers acted as if they had snuck out of an Escher print and were trying to get back before they were missed. After the fourth unsuccessful attempt, he hung his coat carefully on a hook in the closet and draped his tie over it. He kicked off his wet shoes, heel-toe, and set them in the bottom of the closet near the heater but not so close that the leather would crack, and turned to look at Dan.

Dan was walking around the room, his head still tilted to one side, his expression intent. "Maybe we're near the Volga. Do you think that's it?"

"We're nowhere near Northeast Minneapolis, Danny, and the Russians there are probably the only ones in town unless there's a trade delegation at another hotel. What are you talking about?"

"Wolves. I hear wolves howling." Dan pursed his lips and softly chanted a slightly off-key wolf howl. "We must be near Kiev, or Lake Baikal."

"The cold's going to your head, Danny. That's the wind you hear."

"We're not in Russia?"

"No, we're not in Russia. We're in St. Paul, more or less. Actually, we're above St. Paul about a hundred feet."

"Could've fooled me," Dan said. His whole body gave one convulsive shiver that he ignored as best he could, and managed not to spill his drink as he sipped it. "Sure feels like Kiev to me."

"Danny, the closest you've ever gotten to Kiev was chicken Kiev. Here, let me take your drink."

"It's too cold in here. Where's the heater?" Dan handed the drink to Casey and checked out the heater under the window. It was on but it couldn't be heard over the sound of the wind outside. He pushed the buttons to turn it up, and the heater groaned and hissed out a puff of air that might have been a little warmer if measured by precise meteorological instruments. "Who got us this room? We should complain to the management."

"You're right. We should see about moving to another room." Casey glanced around the room, seeking the phone. "I'll call the desk and get us another room."

"Good idea."

"Where's the phone?"

"Huh?"

"Where's the phone?"

"Isn't it next to the bed?"

"Not unless it's hiding underneath the bed." Casey got down on hands and knees and looked. Sure enough, the phone was under the bed, far enough that he was glad his arms were long. He snagged it and pulled it in, and sat on the floor with his back against the bedside stand. "It's not working."

"What's wrong?"

"More noise than a cheerleaders' locker room." Casey shook his head. "I'll have to go down to the lobby."

"No."

"No?"

"We'll have to go down to the lobby. You're not leaving me here alone to be thrown to the wolves and freeze in the Siberian wasteland." Dan stared at Casey as if he suspected that might happen, and looked relieved when Casey smiled at him.

"We'll go down. I have a plan."

"A plan? You're going to wave your platinum corporate card at them and demand the penthouse?"

"No. I'm not going to do that because I don't have a platinum corporate card. I have a plain ordinary card that won't buy me anything special." Casey's face lit up in an unholy and dangerous smile, like a choirboy who'd been dipping into the altar wine on the sly. "I'll recite Shakespeare to them until they give us what we want."

"Shakespeare's going to impress them?"

"It has never been known to fail. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers -- "

"Save it for the lobby, Case."

***

There were no other rooms, not even other broom closets. Casey was about to attempt the St. Crispin's Day speech from 'Henry V' for the fourth time -- he kept getting bogged down somewhere around the Duke of York -- when Dan leaned over the desk and started bargaining with the night clerk. He didn't say much, but what he said seemed to get results.

"What did you tell him?" Casey asked in a stage whisper. The night clerk had gone into the back office and dredged a bellboy out of the depths of the hotel, and the bellboy was off on the run. Casey was impressed.

"I told him that if they could make us comfortable they could look forward to our recommending the St. Paul Radisson on the air during our show. And, if they didn't make us comfortable, they could look forward to hearing from our bosses."

"Dan, we don't do endorsements. And who cares? We work in Texas."

"Quiet, they don't know that."

The night clerk returned. "I'm so sorry that we can't offer you another room. What with the storm, we're completely full. However, Harold will bring up some things to make your stay warmer and, we hope, more comfortable."

"Thank you," Dan told him, his broadcast smile on at full power.

***

The "things to make your stay warmer" turned out to be a dozen hot-water bottles, the promise of a complimentary hot breakfast in the morning and a super-king-size electric blanket to top the four blankets already on the bed. Each hot-water bottle had a little fleece bag around it. As the bellboy filled them from the steaming hot tap in the bathroom, they puffed up like little warm sheep.

"They look like lambs," Casey commented.

"Sleep-sheep. That's what they're called," the bellboy said, pointing out the snoring sheep on the label. He arranged them in the bed, spread the electric blanket, which was white, on top of the covers and plugged it in, and prepared to leave.

"Th-the phone?" Dan asked, squinting a little as he shivered and rubbed his hands on his arms. The hot-water bottles, each one a little larger than a football, really did look like sheep under a snowdrift, huddled beneath the covers.

The bellboy picked up the phone, threw a switch on the bottom, and put it down again. "It was turned off. It's fine now. Good night." He nodded politely and left without waiting for a tip.

Dan was still shivering. Casey held his shoulders and pushed him gently toward the bed.

"Get in. You're freezing."

"But it's, they're, there's only one --"

"Only one pile of sleep sheep. I know. You have to get warm." Casey looked Dan in the eye; Dan looked surprisingly young and vulnerable. "Can you get out of your clothes all right?"

"G-gr-great. I'm fuh-freezing and you wuh-want to und-d-dress me."

"Don't they ever get frostbite in Connecticut? The fastest way to warm someone is body heat." Casey gave up on Dan's fumble-fingered attempts to deal with his own clothing and carefully peeled him out of his sweater and jeans. "In. You. Now."

Dan lay down in the huddle of fuzzy hot-water bottles. Casey pulled the covers over him, turned on the electric blanket, and shook his head. He was feeling far too numb himself; the cold must have affected him more than he expected. He pulled his own clothes off as quickly as possible in the chilly room and slid under the covers quickly, then reached back to turn the light out..

Once in bed, Casey reached over behind Dan to pull the sleep sheep in around him as closely as possible. He settled a few sleep sheep around himself, then pulled Dan close to him, putting his arms around him so that they lay like lovers, long legs intertwined below their boxers. Dan's nipples stood up like stones under his thin undershirt; Casey could feel them rubbing against his arm.

"B-b-bo-dy heat?" Dan whispered.

"Surest remedy for hypothermia or frostbite," Casey murmured.

"Why are y-you d-doing this?"

Casey mentally complimented Dan on attaining a sentence with only two stutters in it. "Because I'm not that warm myself," he said quietly, feeling Dan's soft hair against his cheek, "and because if I let anything happen to you I'll have to find someone else to audition with me for a job in Dallas."

"Dallas?"

No stutter at all. Good.

"Stan and George are leaving the show in Dallas; I sent the station our audition tape."

"Ours? Yours and mine?" Dan slid around in bed until he was on his back, and turned his face toward Casey. "The one we made at that party?"

"It's the only one I had with both of us on it," Casey admitted. "I thought it sounded good."

"It's damn good, as a joke. But for real?"

The bed was actually starting to feel warm. Casey felt his muscles begin to loosen. "Real enough that they want us to drive up for an interview next week."

"Oh, man. Dallas," Dan sighed. "When were you going to tell me?"

"Earlier tonight, but you got me started with the Jaegermeister, and I forgot." Casey closed his eyes. Holding Dan felt different from holding Lisa, but similar in a good way. Different shapes of body, but the knowledge that someone shared the bed with him felt so comforting. He wasn't alone in the dark, even if the broad-shouldered, lean body next to him wasn't small and soft and sleeping like a stone. It didn't matter; he was there with a friend. He wasn't alone in the dark.

Dan wasn't shivering as strongly any more. He turned and hugged Casey close. "Thanks for thinking of me."

Casey's mouth crooked at the corners. He knew Dan couldn't see that in the dark, but he also knew Dan would be able to tell, somehow, from the sound of his voice. "Well, you've been bitching about dealing with Clyde's policy changes for a couple of months now, so I didn't think you'd object."

"Hey, I've wanted to work with you ever since we met, man. I didn't think I had a chance."

"Now you have."

"Oh, yeah." Dan sighed again, and lay still. "You know, this isn't bad. It's almost like having a waterbed."

"You're right, except a waterbed would stay put a little better." Casey prodded an escaping sleep sheep back into position along his side. It made a small slosh, nothing like a baa. "You getting warmer?"

"Yeah. The body heat is helping."

"Good."

For no reason he could explain to himself later, Casey leaned in enough to kiss Dan on the forehead. He settled his arms around Dan and slid into unconsciousness.

Casey woke when the light through the window seemed like dawn. When his eyes were focused enough to read the clock, the time was 11:30. The window itself was covered in ice, with a light frosting of snow around the edges, blurring the view of downtown, but he knew the room was supposed to be facing toward the airport. He couldn't see any movement in that direction from the bed. No, wait. That was the hotel in Minneapolis where they couldn't get a room. This one was nowhere near an airport. Rather than disturb Dan, he reached for the phone.

"Front desk."

"Hi. This is Casey McCall. I'm supposed to fly back to Texas today. What's the travel situation?"

"The airport's closed, sir. They expect to reopen it later today, perhaps mid-afternoon, but you'd be well advised to rebook your flight for tomorrow if possible."

"Thanks."

He'd been speaking as quietly as possible, but when he hung up the phone Dan was awake and peering over the edge of the covers.

"We're snowed in."

"Yes."

"No flights out today."

"Probably not, unless we want to wait at the airport for first available."

"Forget that," Dan said decisively. "You know we'd just have to come back here overnight anyway, and we'd have to go out in the cold before that. Let's just cut out the middle man here and stay in the hotel."

"Okay."

"How are your sleep sheep?"

"Sloshy but intact. They're not very warm any more."

Casey toyed with the electric blanket control. "I think this is as warm as it gets, which is not very. The bed won't freeze solid."

"Oh, that's good." Dan slid down until only his eyes showed above the edge of the covers. "We have several options, you know."

"Such as?"

"One or both of us could get out of bed and refill the sleep sheep, and come back."

"And get very cold doing it."

"And get very cold doing it, not to mention that there's no guarantee that we'll have enough hot water."

"Or hot enough water."

"That too." Casey felt encouraged; Dan wasn't stuttering with cold any more. "What else?"

"We could bundle."

"Bundle?"

"Bundle. Don't tell me your pioneer ancestors didn't know about bundling."

Casey racked his brain. "Wait a minute. Wasn't that how couples courted in cold weather, in bed with a board down between them?"

"Give a cigar to the man with the Phi Beta Kappa key."

"There's just one problem with that."

"Only one?" Dan murmured.

"We don't have a board."

"True."

"We're not courting, either."

"I didn't think that was a problem. You're already married."

"You're not."

"But I'm not courting you."

"And we've been curled around each other all night, which makes the whole thing ridiculous. Any other options?"

Dan rolled over on his side to face Casey. They lay so close that Casey could feel the tip of Dan's nose brushing against his cheek, and could hear the sweep of Dan's eyelashes across the pillowcase.

"We could keep each other warm," Dan said quietly, with a sideward look Casey barely caught before it slid away, "generate our own heat. It's Saturday; we've still got a couple of hours before they stop serving brunch."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Oh, something like this."

Casey felt Dan's warm long-fingered hand stroking him through the front of his boxers. The touch wasn't tentative or clumsy, and the slight pressure, deepening as Dan's fingertips slid lower over the cotton, went through Casey to the core. His head went back against the pillow, his back arching, and Dan slid closer, laying his head on Casey's shoulder and nuzzling into his neck.

Warmer? Oh, he was on fire, fanned by the light breath against the skin of his throat, and the brush of lips up across the bone of his jaw. The flame grew and surged, and he felt himself lengthening, hardening under those long fingers carefully, steadily stroking him. He groaned and pushed at the boxers with the one hand he had free -- the other was still wrapped around Dan's shoulders, almost forgotten -- and Dan's hand followed the cloth down and came back up, fingers on skin.

Warmth on warmth. Gentleness and tenderness on him, wrapping around him, exploring and measuring him, called forth something deeper than simple feeling, more central than mere emotional expression. He wanted to say something but for once in his life the words were gone as if they'd never existed. He pulled Dan closer, cradling Dan's head in his hand, feeling the soft dark hair brushing his shoulder, his ear, his cheek. His hand slid lower, as far down Dan's back as he could reach, measuring the long muscles along the spine and the movement of ribs under the skin.

The only thought that remained, in the midst of the flames, as he moved and surged under Dan's hand, was that this didn't feel strange to him at all. His own breathing sounded like a bellows, and the wind-whipped fire jumped the firebreak, the burned-over zone inside him and raced across the rest of his territory, out of control.

He was sobbing as he came, clutching Dan close to him, wrapping his leg around Dan, pulling him closer and tighter to himself than he ever held anyone in his life, and Dan rode it out with him, flying on the flames, cradling him with wordless murmurs.

Dan's eyes were huge, dark, and so close to him. His hand still wrapped around Casey, still caressed him, as if he were someone to be treasured.

When Casey found thought and language returning to him, only one word escaped his lips in that first whisper.

"Why?"

"Why not? Because."

Casey waited as his body reassembled itself out of ecstatic molecules. "Works for me." He hoped that Dan wouldn't let go until he was back inside himself again; he needed that warm, sticky hand to anchor him to reality, to this bed in the cold corner room at the St. Paul Radisson. It was as if he were a flag, or a kite, floating up and out of the room, and Dan's hand was the only contact he had with the everyday world of sportscasting and snow.

Not that this was, at all, an everyday thing.

"Um," Casey ventured, after an unmeasured amount of time, "you majored in what at Dartmouth?"

"Depends on when." Dan's soft voice was so close to his ear that he could feel the warm breath move the tiny hairs on his skin, especially the ones at that spot behind his ear that never seemed to be trimmed right. "I started with interdisciplinary studies."

"And then?" Casey reached an arm skyward; no, he couldn't quite touch the ceiling. He could have sworn he was on the other side of it for a while.

"Well," Dan said, with a small shift to nestle closer with his head on Casey's shoulder, "I flunked Biology 102, and transferred into broadcast journalism."

"Bio 102? Isn't that the one with the -- "

"Dissections. Yes, Casey, at this very moment you're lying in bed with someone who will never look a fetal pig in the face again." Dan suppressed a shudder. "I don't eat frog legs, either, or crayfish."

"Let's get back to this interdisciplinary studies thing," Casey said, firmly putting behind him the image of Dan looking any of those creatures in the face in the first place, with or without a scalpel in hand. "That would be something like liberal arts?"

"You could say that. Very liberal."

"I think I'd figured that out."

"I didn't think you minded. I should have asked. Do you mind?" Dan raised his head to look Casey in the eye. "Should I apologize and hie myself to the chill, far reaches of this bed -- which is about the size of Wrigley Field -- and never come near you again?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Casey slid an arm around Dan's shoulders and hugged him, body to body, full length, enjoying the slight fluff of their mutual body hair in appropriate places. "I'm just a former history major. How am I going to know how to reciprocate? We didn't have this kind of liberal arts course at Northwestern."

"This?" Dan eased into that slightly crooked smile that Casey loved to see. "I learned it in night courses, extra credit."

"I see. I suppose Dartmouth didn't disapprove of your, um, extracurricular studies."

"Dartmouth prefers to turn out the well-rounded man, with a solid grasp of knowledge in many areas of study." Dan paused. "Or woman. It's not a male-only institution. I just find it a little hard to talk about well-rounded women in quite the same way."

"I can see that." Casey felt himself start to smile, in response to that irresistible smile of Dan's. "How about 'well-rounded individual,' or would that be too impersonal?"

Dan nodded judiciously. "That's good."

"Of course, it doesn't solve my current dilemma."

"Which is?"

"The proper style of reciprocation. These things might be regional, for all I know, like dance steps. Did you know that there have been studies done on how quickly various styles of dancing move from one part of the country to another? And in every one of them the Midwest was the last place to learn what was new?"

Dan's finger traced a pattern down the big vein to the root, and across to his thigh; the sheets and, for that matter, an errant sleep sheep or two had absorbed any stickyness from earlier. "Casey, I have great faith in you. I've known you for a while now, and you've always shown yourself to be creative and inventive."

"I'll try not to let you down. So to speak." And Casey leaned in to nibble on the side of Dan's neck, at that delicious place next to his ear and down his neck to where the point of his collarbone rose near his arm. Dan sighed, and his hand slid and tightened on Casey again. Encouraged, Casey explored further, down Dan's narrow chest and across his belly and on down to his thighs, to the accompaniment of more sighs, heavier breathing and a few soft moans.

Casey'd gone down on Lisa often enough, and she'd enjoyed it; they'd made mutual licking and squealing a regular part of their sexual acrobatics until her pregnancy, when some of the ways they'd found to sixty-nine weren't comfortable for her any more. Actually, pretty much anything they did made her feel uncomfortable now that she was so far along, even oral sex, so he'd settled for watching her eat ice cream, which she did lasciviously enough to make him laugh. At times like that he could tell himself that they were just having a bad spot in the marriage, and it would pass. Much of that did pass, after Charlie was born, but now she was exhausted all the time, and seldom if ever had enough energy for late-night nibbling. When she slept, these days, she was like a stone.

He missed it, missed that immersion in scent and taste and touch all at once, and the way it could make someone else as happy as he was. Well, there were differences, and he'd be the last one to say otherwise -- but damn, he could be creative.

Casey started with some gentle sniffing and nuzzling, and went on to explore Dan with his lips and tongue. He rubbed the side of his face carefully against the place where Dan's thigh and belly met and introduced himself to Dan's cock with a warm, slow lick from base to tip.

Dan went still, quivering, his breath slow and careful.

Maybe there weren't as many differences as Casey expected. Hand jobs were wonderful -- and, certainly, what Dan had done for him was so far above the usual and mundane as to put it into a different classification altogether -- but when all was said and done they were, well, commonplace. A known quantity. Any guy who had a cock and a hand knew how to put them together and feel good from the time he was twelve or so. But a tongue job took finesse.

Casey knew he wasn't always socially aware. Sometimes he felt awkward around Lisa's friends, and didn't know what to say or do. But he knew, as he'd always known, the basic paradox of his life: he was a man who was paid for talking, but whose greatest communication took place in bed, silently, with finesse.

That was one of the reasons Lisa had married him, he knew, and it was one of the reasons they were still together. It wasn't the only reason, it was far from the only reason, but it was right up there near the top of the list. He might not be all she wanted in the daylight, but at night there was no question that he was what she wanted.

The problem, though, the one problem he'd never quite been able to explain to her, no matter how long he tried to come up with the right words to say it, was that she wasn't always the only one he wanted -- and this had nothing to do with how he felt about her, which was intense and complicated and hard to explain. Sometimes he just wanted someone who smelled different, not so flowery. Lisa's roommate, Dana, smelled very good most of the time, but still not right.

Dan had always smelled good to him, from the first time they'd met, sweaty, on a collegiate handball court.

Casey breathed warmly on Dan, tasting the musky scent that arose each time he inhaled, and decided to follow his instincts: if it smelled good, taste it; if it felt good to do, do more of it. A stray line from a televised talk by Joseph Campbell floated into his mind. Follow your bliss. He stifled a snort -- Dan jumped -- and opened his mouth.

Dan clutched the covers, gasping.

A phrase of the bar's music drifted through Casey's mind, and he smiled to himself. This was just another kind of jazz, improvised -- but this time he might be able to play well enough to make music. He started with a basic rhythm of fingers and thumb, added a paradiddle of fast licks to various spots, and continued with attention to what, in a drum kit, would have been the high hat cymbal. Then he dropped the drum metaphor and went for a more woodwind approach, something with the intensity of clarinet and the pure sexual drive of a hot saxophone, and added, as he speeded up, a little brass something he'd heard in a Louis Armstrong cornet solo, notes that curled and vibrated and twirled, hot and sweet and passionate.

Dan felt his eyes rolling up in his head as his back arched. He stiffened and clutched Casey's shoulder as every molecule of his being poured out in a rush to tour the cosmos.

Casey finished swallowing, licking his lips like a cat after dinner. He slid out from under the covers, just enough to see whether Dan was still breathing.

"Hey, you okay there?"

Dan's voice sounded breathy, barely audible. "I'll tell you when I get back from the other side."

"You sound like you've had a religious experience."

"I am. I have. Wh-where did you l-learn --"

"I've been told I'm good at improvisation."

Dan's eyes rolled back down from watching the inside of his brain. When he opened them, Casey was there, next to his shoulder, viewing him steadily with a smile that seemed a little anxious at the corners.

"And we're going to be working together."

Casey nodded.

"You know, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship." Dan hoped his Bogart imitation came through. From the way Casey's smile widened, he knew it had worked. The anxiety was gone. He leaned forward to kiss Casey, tasting Casey and himself and maybe a little of the future as well. "We've got all the time in the world, if you want to play it again."

"Go round up the usual suspects," Casey murmured, with a fake French accent that could have been spread on toast. "This isn't going to be something we can do all the time, once we're back, is it." His eyes were still smiling, though his mouth was sober.

Dan rolled over to face him, and put his arms around him. "I don't want to eat caviar every day, either. It's too rich a diet."

"What could you eat, every day?"

"Working with you."

"I can do that." Casey leaned in for one more kiss, a long one, like a question and its answer and a promise all in one. He stopped when he heard Dan's stomach rumble. "How about the free breakfast they offered?"

"About time, too. You can have the shower first."

******  


>   
>  Casey: Jeez, Danny, that night in Minneapolis with the Jaegermeister, we didn't do anything untoward, did we?  
>  Dan: You mean did we get married?  
>  Casey: Yeah.  
>  Dan: No.  
>  Casey: Good.  
>  Dan: You recited the St. Crispin's Day speech from the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.  
>  Casey: Well, was it untoward? Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.  
>  (Later)  
>  Dan: (to Casey) I remember what you were wearing. Do you remember what I was wearing?  
>  Casey: I remember not thinking at the time that you were a woman.  
>  \--- from the first-season episode 'Thespis'   
> 


End file.
